A
new hotel from Amway and a big move by
the Grand Rapids Art Museum trigger celebrations — and
a sense of déjà vu for
1981.

"From
our rugged pioneer ancestors, who stubbornly
pushed
on to new frontiers and tamed the wilderness,
we inherited a precious heritage … tenacity,
pride, hard work, (the motivation) to do
better.

Our forebearers wanted no fame or public acclaim. Their reward was in seeing the communities they
founded grow through their efforts, in watching
them become self-sufficient … a pride in
self-accomplishment.

“Times have changed, but Grand Rapidians
still maintain much of this inheritance. And
this September, we are celebrating another chapter
in the city’s rich history.”

Those words, written by Grand Rapids Magazine
publisher John Zwarensteyn, appeared on the pages
of this magazine 26 years ago, but their sentiment
echoes with remarkable relevance today.

In September 1981, Grand Rapids hosted one serious
party in honor of three serious new additions
to its downtown. That was the year the Gerald
R. Ford Presidential Museum opened, the Grand
Rapids Art Museum moved from the Pike House at
230 E. Fulton St. to the former Federal Building
at 155 N. Division Ave., and the Pantlind Hotel
reopened as the Amway Grand Plaza. (The tower,
then called Grand Plaza West, was still under
construction and did not open until 1983.)

This year, the cause for Celebration on the
Grand — as
the annual party came to be known — is
another new hotel from Amway Hotel Corp. and
another big move for the Grand Rapids Art Museum — this
time to a brand new building at 101 Monroe Center
NW designed specifically for the GRAM.

“We only thought that was going to be one celebration,
in 1981,” explained Martin J. Allen Jr.,
who served on the initial planning committee
for Celebration on the Grand. Allen is a former
Old Kent Bank executive and Chairman Emeritus
of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation. “And
here, they still continue to have Celebrations
on the Grand, and there’s always been a
new reason to celebrate.

“Now, we’re on the threshold of
other reasons to celebrate: another new hotel
and the new art
museum. So there is a great parallel there from
what has happened and from what has continued
to happen in this community.”

What’s continuing to happen is an ongoing
improvement project referred to as “the
multiplier effect” by the late Richard
M. Gillett, former Old Kent Bank chairman.

The new Grand
Rapids Art Museum

Former
Old Kent president and CEO John Canepa succeeded
Gillett as chairman in 1985. In 1995, he retired
from the bank that eventually became Fifth Third.
Today Canepa co-chairs the Grand Action Committee,
the group of community leaders that has built
support for various downtown projects in Grand
Rapids.

“Developing the Van Andel Arena — that
had the multiplier effect, where all of a sudden
we had 18 to 20 new restaurants downtown,” Canepa
said. “These things feed off one another.
The opening of the Pantlind and the subsequent
building of the tower helped our convention business
because we finally had good facilities for conventioneers
when they come into town. And when they come
into town, conventioneers aren’t going
to sit in meetings all day; they want to go around
downtown and they want to see what’s available.

“And so the museum could become a showpiece.”

Canepa co-chaired the $3 million capital campaign
that moved the GRAM from its original home into
the Federal Building. In 1981, the museum was
not in a position to build its own building,
but the organization desperately needed more
square footage and more visibility than the tiny
Pike House could provide.

Canepa called the GRAM’s move into the
Federal Building a “stepping stone.”

“It was first things first,” he said. “‘First,
let’s get out of the building where we
don’t have enough space and get into a
building that has more square footage at a reasonable
cost’ — that was the goal initially.
And the next step was, ‘Let’s design
a museum that architecturally cements our identity.’ And
that’s what they’ve done.”

The growth of the DeVos and Van Andel involvement
in the hospitality industry downtown also came
in stages as Grand Rapids developed into a viable
convention destination. What started in the 1980s
with the Amway families’ renovation of
the Pantlind and the building of the Amway Grand
Plaza tower continued in the 1990s with the Plaza
Towers project, née Eastbank Waterfront
Towers. Amway partially financed the building
of the project. The company took over controlling
interest in 1993 after leaking exterior panels
led to a series of lawsuits, which Amway settled
within two years. Plaza Towers is home to a 213-room
Courtyard by Marriott, which was franchised by
Radisson prior to Amway’s takeover.

The most recent stage — the new JW Marriott — was
initiated in the early years of this decade after
a series of studies on the potential impact that
the DeVos Place convention center would have
on the hospitality industry when it opened in
2003.

“A couple of other people talked, but nobody
talked with any money — as far as building
a new hotel,” said Richard M. DeVos, who
co-founded Amway with Jay Van Andel. “They
talked about moving City Hall and all that stuff,
and
I agree, that would have been a good location — maybe.

“The city felt it needed more (hotel) capacity;
everybody seemed to think we needed more capacity. … Finally
I said to Jay, ‘What do you say? You got
one more good building in you?’ And he
said, ‘Yeah, I think so.’”

Van Andel died in December 2004. The JW Marriott,
the last project he and DeVos worked on together,
will be more modern, more luxurious and more
expensive per night than the Amway Grand Plaza.
However, DeVos and Van Andel took pains to insure
that guests at their original hotel don’t
feel like they’re getting second-rate accommodations.

DeVos said that in the 25-plus years of operation
of the Amway Grand Plaza, he and Van Andel never
took any profits out of the hotel. Instead, they
have made the hotel their own self-contained
continuous improvement project.

“It’s always a little shock to people
that we’ve never taken any money out of
that business,” DeVos said. “I don’t
think Jay and I ever discussed it. Joe (Tomaselli,
president and CEO of Amway Hotel Corp.) ran it — and
I guess maybe one time he said, ‘You need
any money out of here?’ And we said, ‘No,
we don’t need any money out of here. Just
use it to keep it up.’ And so all the money
went into improvements, and that hotel looks
just as good today as it did 25 years ago.”

Thanks mainly to the dedication of the Gerald
R. Ford Presidential Museum in 1981, the inaugural
Celebration on the Grand welcomed dignitaries
from around the world to Grand Rapids. This year’s
event won’t have the same star power. But
as the rich history of downtown redevelopment
in this city opens another chapter, the future
continues to look pretty bright.

“People keep saying it’s going to stop, and then you see a new hotel
go up and a new art museum,” Allen said. “And you see a lot of new
things going up in the medical center, and the colleges — even though they’re
on the periphery — building new athletic facilities.